Permission for Seasons: What Living in New England Has Taught Me

Remember that a lake
can freeze
and unfreeze
a thousand times
and feel no shame.[1]

I have vivid memories of the handful of times my parents have told me about an episode my dad endured in his early thirties. As a zealous lay minister, father of two young children, and up-and-comer in his professional field, my dad became perilously overcommitted, extending himself well beyond his capacities and causing him to experience some type of extended anxiety attack or mental breakdown. Whenever I think of this, what strikes me most is not that even my dad had his limitations, superhuman though he has always seemed to me, but that an atmosphere of discomfort fills the room whenever my parents mention this episode. It is spoken of infrequently, reluctantly, and in hushed tones. An awkwardness accompanies the story’s retelling, as though it is a matter of significant shame.

It may not surprise you to learn that my upbringing took place in sunny Southern California — that land of pleasant weather, blue skies, and virtually no seasonality. SoCal sends its residents the message that seasons are not to be expected. Life is meant to be lived in a perpetual state of summertime glory, and the Christianity of the region largely mirrors this messaging. Just as a harsh winter would be experienced as out of place and unwelcome in Los Angeles or San Diego, so are dark seasons of the soul considered largely impermissible for Christianity’s SoCal expression. If you do experience a spiritual winter, it is probably your fault, probably a reason for you to be ashamed.

For the last three years, however, my family and I have been living in New England, our home situated near the steep though humble banks of the unassuming Ammonoosuc, a river that remains frozen over as I write these words in early March — a river that, to borrow the phrasing of James Pearson, can freeze and unfreeze a thousand times and feel no shame. For New England offers its rivers, and its people, a generous permission that Southern California understandably struggles to extend: permission for life to be marked by seasons.

“For New England offers its rivers, and its people, a generous permission that Southern California understandably struggles to extend: permission for life to be marked by seasons.”

This permission has been slowly working its way into my bones these past three years, not to mention granting me eyes to see the ways in which scripture itself has been attempting to give us this same permission all along. Take Israel’s wisdom literature, for example. Proverbs represents summer, that season in which the growth of spring is on full display. Everything is vibrant; everything is alive; everything seems to be working as it should. But as summer gives way to fall, we enter into the world of the Psalms, a book that gives voice to frustration as much as celebration, a book that holds the tension of cherishing the perspectives of Proverbs while acknowledging when those same perspectives can’t account for the complexities and absurdities of our lived experience. Winter, in turn, is represented by Ecclesiastes, a book in which the positive vibes of summer have gone dormant, a book in which the authentic expression of doubt and disorientation is revealed as a counterintuitive pathway to intimacy with God. And just as winter gives way to spring, so does an honest experience of Ecclesiastes eventually bud and blossom as the Song of Songs, a book in which the setting of the spiritual life is almost scandalously relocated from the classroom to the bedroom, a book in which new life emerges.

And so the cycle repeats.

In the warm glow of such permission, season after season is not only expected but embraced, no shame required. This is what living in New England has taught me. And though I’ll always be a SoCal boy at heart, I cannot be more grateful for how New England has given this SoCal heart permission to embrace, rather than resist, seasonality on its journey toward union with Christ.

[1] From the poem Self-Compassion in James A. Pearson, The Wilderness That Bears Your Name (Tacoma, WA: Goat Trail Press, 2024), 30.